Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Friday, August 8, 2014

Gaza and the Lessons Israel Must Learn

During the last few weeks I have been
struggling to write anything about Gaza because
I have been overwhelmed by the huge quantity of articles and emails relating to
this, the third hot conflict to take place between Israel and HAMAS in six years. What has transpired since the hot war began on
July 8th should not have surprised anyone because the so called
“cold war” has been ongoing since HAMAS seized power in 2007.

The problem I have with the global reaction to
the Israeli campaign is that the world remained silent as approximately 15,000
missiles and mortar rounds were fired indiscriminately, at Israel, and all this since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.Referring to the IS assault on Mosul and the flight of Christians
from Iraq the world remained
silent according to Patrick Coburn, (no friend of Israel) who, writing in The
Independent said “It is the greatest mass flight of Christians in the
Middle East since the Armenian massacres and the expulsion of Christians from
Turkey during and after the First World War.”Between 170,000 and 200,000 people have been slaughtered in Syria during
the Syrian Civil War but Muslim and anti-war demonstrators have been all but
silent throughout. The world has conveniently ignored over 10,000 Black people
(mostly Christians) killed in Nigeria
– and no-one mentions the hundreds of girls who were kidnapped there anymore. There
are more conflicts that we have similarly ignored – either due to Muslim ‘sensitivity’
or for some other inexplicable, likely racist reason.

Another problem, as I referred to in my
previous blog, is that there exists a pattern of condemnation and non-debate representing
a relentless campaign of condemnation of Israel and an incessant assault on
our senses.This silence on the central
role played by Gaza’s Muslim fundamentalists in
ethnic cleansing and war crimes is not so mystifying when we understand the
thought processes that afflict Gaza’s
Western co-conspirators.This silence
should not surprise us even when actions from Gaza
into Israel
are clearly manufactured to cause as many civilian casualties as possible.If a maximalist theology such as Islamism, views
any casualty as no more than a sacrifice for the glorification of Islam then neither
Israeli nor Palestinian lives are of any importance. Islam refers to itself as
the religion of peace but its fundamentalist adherents have a frightening
enthusiasm for what one article aptly described as “the human sacrifice of Gaza’s people on the
altar of radical, Islamic ideology.”

There are five clear points to be made when
looking at Operation Protective Edge.Israel should
have understood this and taken all of the following into account well before the
current conflict erupted.

1. The
nation that controls the streaming of news to the outside world will win the
propaganda war and as a consequence, the peace that follows on from the
ceasefire.

2. Not
everyone has the tools or the energy that is needed to defend themselves
against incessant media attacks on Israel. Jews who have traditionally
been Israel’s most fervent
supporters are increasingly divided because of how Israel is portrayed in the media.
It does not help that Jewish Uncle Toms become ever more vociferous in their
condemnation of not only Israel
but also ‘partisan’ Jewish support in the Diaspora.

3. Diplomatic
attacks on Israel
increase with frequency and greater visibility as Palestinian casualties rise.Politicians scramble to win votes from
disgruntled Muslim and pro-Muslim voters.Diplomatic isolation will encourage those people who call for Israel
to be economically isolated.

4. An
asymmetric war is a war between belligerents with one side significantly weaker
than the other.Civilians become both
willing and unwilling participants in battle, which in the case of Israel-HAMAS
is fought in an urban environment.Women
and children become human shields for Arab fighters who quickly retire from the
field of engagement. They deliberately leave the civilians to suffer the
greatest proportion of the casualties while HAMAS fighters safely hide in those
closeted underground shelters meant only for them.

5. Active
or passive collaboration by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) has
resulted in UN funded clinics being rigged with explosives to kill, UNRWA staff
being active HAMAS operatives and operating from schools, clinics and
hospitals. Know your enemy.

I want to put forward my impressions, from
afar; my lessons for any future conflicts that Israel must deal with.The sentences in quotation marks (excepting
the Quote from the founder of the Huffington Post) come from an exhibition on
propaganda, power and persuasion that took place at the British Library in London, England.

1.“Using
appropriate symbolism can generate deep psychological resonances.” When
pictures of devastation and death are prominently displayed people do not care how
many terrorists are embedded within Gaza’s
civilian population, or that they use human shields as a matter of tactical
military design. Nor will they be
interested in the niceties of international war crimes statutes which declare
that it is illegal for a combatant to wear civilian clothing when engaged in hostile
military activity.

“Too many reporters
have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the
truth, consequences be damned.” Arianna Huffington

2.The
truth is unimportant – only the sound bite counts.“Decide on your message and stick to it,
repeating it in as many different media as you can mobilize.”

3.Israeli
babies and Israeli children, brutally murdered by Palestinians, have been
deliberately re-labelled as Gazan victims of the Israeli assault and then,
their pictures forwarded, in some instances, hundreds of thousands of times, as
proof of Israeli cruelty. The modern media is instantaneous, has no scruples
and rarely apologies for its errors.Even when it is forced to make amends it is by then too late to have any
impact.Initial impressions are what
stick while afterthoughts are predictably disregarded.

4.“Be
selective about the truth. Control how and when information is released. Ensure
only stories that support your position are reported.”A picture tells a thousand stories. It is a
cliché but nevertheless, in propaganda, it is truth.HAMAS has willingly sacrificed hundreds of its
own people in the current conflict and that is a tactical decision as well.Every televised act of destruction, every
picture of a wounded or dead child acts to create a lasting impression of
unforgiving brutality.

There are eight issues:

1. The bigots and their purveyors of hate will
always tell you that we (the Zionists) control the media.Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if it was true? But
it never has been. I once discussed this same issue with a senior Sikh manager
at British Telecom plc (where I worked for many years).He told me that ‘the Jews’ controlled the
global press. I said if that was true, how is it possible that Germany was
able to incite Germans against their Jewish compatriots and how was it possible
that the Shoah was ‘permitted’ to occur? He looked momentarily sheepish and
then recovering, he said “I meant that since the end of WW2….”You cannot convince a racist that they are at
fault, you can only isolate them.

2. People are offended when Jews label
another person or group ‘Nazi,’ as if once they were defeated the toxic entity
that ruled Germany
between 1933 and 1945 was banished forever.The difference between fascism and Nazism is that the former may express
an attitude of contempt for a minority but does not necessarily use violence as
a means of controlling society. The latter expresses an exterminationist
doctrine. HAMAS is a Nazi
organization.If its target group are
all Jews, it does not mean that like the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS or ISIL), it will not turn on Christians and every other minority within its
territory once it has disposed of us.

It may be argued that this war was inevitable given
both the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt,
and continuous missile attacks from Gaza into Israel that
preceded the initial blockade.Most
Israelis do not believe that Israel
provoked the conflict but are certain that its military tried to minimize enemy
casualties. We are frequently reminded by those people who want us punished
that Gaza’s
civilian population democratically chose HAMAS to govern them.Gaza’s
civilian population voted into power a Muslim Nazi political party. Time and again it has expressed a desire to
kill every Jew and not just those in Israel.It is a message we should convey to reporters
at every briefing or interview (but we fail to do it).

3. It must be emphasized that HAMAS rules Gaza with an iron fist. It
may not be lobbing missiles and mortar rounds into Israel
but if it rules Gaza
by right then it is obligated to exercise control over those other groups that
have fired rounds into Israeli territory. Governments cannot ‘have it both ways’.In November 2012 when Operation Pillar of
Defense came to an end HAMAS operatives did not fire any further missiles at Israel.During 2013 five missiles per month on
average, were fired at Israel
but between January and June 2014 this increased to 33 missiles hitting Israeli
territory each month.This is, by
definition, ethnic cleansing and each indiscriminately fired missile, a war
crime.Israel could never relax while
missiles were being sent across its southern borders.Sovereign authority, which HAMAS claims to
exercise in Gaza,
means that it is responsible for any weapons fired from its territory.

We seem reluctant to remind people that the
estimated 600,000 tons of cement HAMASdiverted
from civilian projects was used instead to build a myriad of underground
warrens to protect its ‘fighters’, to store offensive weapons and to launch
attacks against Israeli civilian targets.Those thirty two known tunnels that were extended into Israel were a legitimate casus belli for Israel’s Gaza
assault.

4. Michael Walzer explained the rule of
proportionality thus:“If you are aiming
at military targets (rocket launchers, for example) and know that your attack
will also cause civilian casualties (collateral damage), you must make sure
that the number of dead or injured civilians is "not
disproportionate" to the value of the military target. Needless to say,
this is a highly subjective calculation and has rarely been much of a limit on
military attacks: This target is very valuable, the generals say; almost any
number of civilian deaths is justifiable. Nor has proportionality provided
much of a guideline for moral judgments: Even a very low number of civilian
deaths, the moralists say, are disproportionate and a war crime.”

It is that final sentence that creates the
dream situation for HAMAS and the nightmare for Israel.

5. After the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center
(ITIC) published a list of hundreds of names of militants killed in the current
conflict that same evening Gaza’s
ministry of the interior issued a warning to all Palestinians not to divulge
information about terrorist operatives killed in Operation Protective
Edge.The New York Times explained the
debate thus: “The difference between roughly half the dead being combatants, in
the Israeli version, or barely 10 percent, to use the most stark numbers on the
other side, is wide enough to change the characterization of the conflict.”

HAMAS talks with one voice. All casualty
figures are released via the HAMAS run Ministry of Health.HAMAS does not draw a distinction between civilians
and combatants. It categorizes all victims as civilian.The Times of London analyzed the available
data and showed that the age group of 20 to 29 years was “most likely to be
militants”.9% of Gaza fits this age group but 34% of the
killed fitted into this age-group.Other
analyses put the militant deaths as high as 62% (based on fighting age alone).HAMAS are alleged to
have “executed” dozens of civilians for protesting against the war and dozens more
accused of being collaborators (often grudge killings).Then there are
the misfires, the most infamous taking place at the Shifa hospital, plus at least two
school ‘accidents.’ The following pattern would be amusing if it was
not so tragic. The furore over a misfired rocket killing “dozens of civilians”
and sparking outrage from presidents, prime-ministers, the secretary general of the UN and
human rights commissioners subsides within a day if an Arab misfire is
suspected but drags on for many days until the next alleged atrocity if it is
the result of an Israeli strike.

6. Many
journalists have now admitted that they were hostages to HAMAS during the time
they spent in Gaza.Journalists not considered to be sympathetic
to Israel have nevertheless
reported that missiles were fired from densely populated civilian areas and that
journalists were deliberately detained during military actions while HAMAS
directed fire at Israel.Most reported their plight only once they had
left Gaza.

7. The
UN refuses to shut down what has become the largest (and arguably, the most
corrupt) organisation inside the UN with some 30,000 staff (many of them HAMAS
operatives).UNRWA does not work for the
benefit of the Palestinian people nor does it work to resolve conflict. It is
an essential weapon in the war of attrition waged internationally against Israel by the
Muslim – Arab world.

In an article in the New York Times, internal
dissent and “open discourse” about the conflict were listed as two of the casualties
in Israel
resulting from Operation Protective Edge.

8. During
a time of war or imminent threat we pull together to help and support each
other. It is a human survival strategy and not as the New York Times bizarrely
referred to it.But the strategy which
ensured that politicians kept their individual as well as collective mouths
shut during the offensive failed when it came to Moshe Feiglin.What anyone thinks of Feiglin is irrelevant.
What he said was so controversial that it deflected attention away from the
conflict and potentially, he created divisions within Israeli society at a time
when the nation needed to be unified.

He should have been sacked from
his post of Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and expelled from the Likud.It should still happen.

In summary, you cannot win a
conflict if your focus is on one threat at a time. The civilian campaign is both
voluntary and coerced. It includes as its foot soldiers a whole swathe of the
international press as well as Muslim and pro-Muslim – “anti-Zionist” activists
in the West.For the next round Israel must
take all of this into account. It must begin working on strategies to defeat
this enemy now.